AuthorTopic: Housing Priority (Read 1706 times)

I've been thinking about this for a few days, but I'm not so sure it'd be easy or possible. It's basically just an idea to mull over, but I wish physically disabled attendees and peeps who are working/conducting business at Fanime had housing priority over everyone else, if not rooms already set aside for them.

I'm pretty sure someone or others might've talked about this before. I guess after finally getting a bit experience under my belt, I'm starting to see why the more seasoned goers often groan about a big, old con having so many issues.

I haven't been paying attention this year, but not hearing anything might also answer my own question: does anyone know if the AA folks found out about their acceptance early enough to get priority housing this year? Last year it was ridiculous how the AA folks were treated in this regard, causing many of them to lose out on housing.

Having either priority housing times or blocks set aside for those in AA, press, industry, etc. or those who are physically disabled was something brought up a number of times last year when the housing fiasco was pretty huge. I think it's a great idea, myself. I would imagine that a priority booking time would be easier to implement and wouldn't require as much guessing at numbers than actually setting aside rooms. Obviously, attendees would need to provide some sort of official documentation -- the documentation needed to get industry badges, AA acceptance numbers, disabled parking permits or other official medical documentation, etc. -- since a lot of people would probably try to abuse this system if the requirements were lax. Standards of who or what qualifies would also need to be set. I'd imagine that people would apply for priority booking by sending in their documentation (whatever it may be) and then the con would put these people in a priority booking window that opens before everyone else's booking window. This would allow people freedom of choice on which hotels they wanted, as well as preventing the con from possibly setting aside too many or too few rooms for this group. People accepted in AA could possibly even be automatically placed into this group without having to specifically apply for it.

Of course, this would require the con to have everything re: press and industry and AA together before pre-reg even opens, and that doesn't sound likely, knowing this con.

Last year it was ridiculous how the AA folks were treated in this regard, causing many of them to lose out on housing.

Exactly! I saw AA peeps make the most ruckus last year when reg directly affected housing. As much as I want walking distance hotels myself, I really thought it was unfair to the people working at/for Fanime to put in even more work just to find a place to sleep.

And knowing that you've most likely been to Fanime more often than me - it's been around for years, but why do they have so many major problems? Why does it feel like some things never really get a permanent fix?

Unfortunately, there IS no permanent fix for having too many attendees and too few hotel rooms. Every fix always causes more problems, so all you can do is hope that the net effect is positive.

Sadly, this is the case when it comes to housing, and what I've been saying for years about this con. Simply too few hotel rooms for the number of attendees, and no permanent fixes for that unless the con moves or more hotels spring up.

Though, the server issues are a major problem and should not have been going on this long. Same with the communication issues. This year was better than last year with that, since at least we knew about the hotel system /before/ reg went up, but still, we only had a day's notice. And possibly some of the housing for those conducting business at the con issues, though I haven't heard any complaints yet this year.

I can't really speak to why the con has so many major problems in general terms, either, without getting into speculation. I do feel that this con has been resting on its laurels for a while and counts on its history, size, and location to be a draw as much as the con itself. There really isn't much competition for large anime cons in NorCal (there's Sacanime but that's kind of a joke), and the location is great for things like cosplay shoots, eating out, and partying, and I think that's all that a significant number of people do at this con. It seems like there's either a lack of leadership or indifferent leadership (or incompetent leadership?), though I'm sure there's a lot going on behind the scenes. However, when the same issues are brought up year after year, you would think that there would be more of an effort to fix them, or at least visible progress. At least the new hotel system is something. I'll give the con that. I liked the new badge check system last year, too. But the reg lines were inexcusable. It seems like every time there's a step forward, the con takes a step back in another area. Part of that is the nature of running a large event, but it seems like there's bigger issues at work here.